I admire Gov. Paul LePage’s desire to restructure Maine’s education system and funding. However, his plans fall dramatically short of what is truly necessary to make changes in our public education system. The state should not be contributing 55 percent of school costs. It should be contributing 100 percent. Here’s why.
In the history of our nation, local communities have been responsible for the education of their children. This structure was beneficial to the individuals and the community as a whole. Those communities that provided quality education had well trained and educated individuals who could contribute to the community. There was an excellent return on investment for the taxpayers. Individuals stayed and worked in these communities and improved the local economies. Relying on local funding (property taxes) was the most efficient and equitable means of funding education because most of the individuals receiving the education stayed and worked in the communities in which they received their education.
This system worked well in both farming and industrial communities. Once children graduated, they would go to work on the farm or at local businesses and factories located in the community. Communities were incentivized to provide a good education simply because it created a population of well-educated individuals ready to work in the community. Money spent on education was recouped in income, sales and property taxes generated from the new members of the workforce. However, things have changed dramatically in the last few decades.
In every corner of the state, factories started to close, adversely affecting small and rural communities the most. One by one, small town factories closed. Individuals in these towns could no longer graduate from high school and start work at the local factory. Textile, shoe, lumber and, now, paper factories closed due to increasing globalization of the workforce. Graduates were forced to move to larger cities or out of state to find work, and the investment that property taxpayers made in these children went with them. No longer are these taxpayers getting their return on investment that served them so well for centuries.
Back then, local control of education was imperative. However, these days local control is simply a myth. With standardized testing, No Child Left Behind and a standards-based diploma there really is very little local control in any school district. Yet local school districts receive all the blame for failing schools and financial punishments for non-compliance of state regulations.
As their best and brightest move out of town, these rural school districts have seen dwindling funds to invest in education. Theoretically, the state provides assistance to compensate for insufficient funds but, in reality, rural school districts often spend less per student than more populated and affluent school districts. And most of the schools that receive failing grades as part of the state Department of Education’s school grading system each year are from poorer school districts.
This institutionalized discrimination must stop — especially if LePage believes that: “We won’t rest until every man, woman and child in Maine gets their chance to achieve prosperity, not poverty,” as he stated earlier this month in his inaugural address.
There should be no reason why a student in rural Piscataquis County has only $7,600 spent annually on his education when a student in Cumberland County receives a $11,000 investment in her education. There will never be equality of opportunity when there is no equality in education.
There is no reason why we should spend time tinkering with a 19th-century education system when we are competing in a 21st-century global economy. There is no reason why a student must ride a bus for an hour completely through one school district in order to attend another school because his town happens to belong to a different district. There is no reason why parents can’t choose to send their struggling children to a school outside a failing district in order for them to receive a better education. There is no reason why we can’t make an investment in our most important infrastructure — human infrastructure!
It is time to make real changes to our tax code, to our school funding system and to the future of our children. We must have the state pay 100 percent of education costs. Every child throughout the state deserves to have the equal opportunities. Every teacher throughout the state should have equal salaries and equal opportunities as well.
No longer will municipalities need to increase property taxes when businesses move out of town or the state tinkers with reimbursement formulas. No longer will students languish in schools that don’t fit their needs. No longer will families have to move in order for their children to receive a better education.
Roy Ulrickson III of Dexter is in his final year of the Master of Social Work program at the University of Maine and has worked in education since 2006.